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Well, if it would be only that I could adapt.
But there are so many things that just are not user friendly, too complicatedd, not responding well, are unlogic, are slow or are simply missing. I have enough of it.

I just did the thing I really tried hard to avoid: I purchased an Adobe CC license. And suddenly work goes quick and well again.

I hope Affinity Publisher will be a worthy ID replacement when it is finished, and then I change over to that.

I can understand the frustration. I started dabbling with InDesign 1.0 when Adobe was charging some ridiculously small amount. I had been using QuarkXpress for years. When Adobe bundled InDesign with Photoshop and Illustrator, it was a no-brainer (3 together cheaper than 3 separate). Kept going with InDesign until present (personally I only went as far as CS5-refuse to pay subscription). As the train wreck of "dumbing down" my Mac OS to keep running CS5 without problems was coming up, I decided to check out the Quark offer for InDesign users in 2017 (I still have my old Quark 3.5 license). Best choice ever. It did take me about 2-3 months of on again/off again usage to get comfortable with the interface (IMO better than InDesign), and re-learning the keyboard shortcuts and just where everything was. Almost 20 years of constant InDesign repetition will do that to your sensibilities and motor skills. There's a few things from InDesign that I miss but nothing critical. To some it may not be, but to me, QuarkXpress feels like a more refined tool than InDesign. Quark support has been very responsive as well as many here on the Forum. The QuarkXpress developers are also responsive as 2018 was a noticeable improvement over 2017. I've learned a valuable lesson from Mike W., and that is not to limit yourself to one piece of software. I do use CC at work, but for personal use I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole. I've also been using Affinity Publisher Beta. I like it. It's Beta so it has limitations. It's another tool to help me achieve my ends. The printers I deal with (Dozens) all have a PDF workflow so native files aren't an issue. Mike also has made points on other forums that if need be he'll activate a CC account for a month to work on a collaborative project (did I get that right Mike?), so no long term commitment. That hasn't been a situation I've found myself in, but going forward, if I did, I'd put down the 10 foot pole for 30 days.

In the end, to each their own. Sorry your experience with Xpress was disappointing. Should you ever give QuarkXpress another chance the only bit of advice I can recommend is patience. It does take time (how much depends on the individual) to get up to speed of what you're used to.

...Mike also has made points on other forums that if need be he'll activate a CC account for a month to work on a collaborative project (did I get that right Mike?), so no long term commitment...

Yep, you got it right, Danny.

Should you ever give QuarkXpress another chance the only bit of advice I can recommend is patience. It does take time (how much depends on the individual) to get up to speed of what you're used to.

In my experience, for most folks, no matter if they are switching to QXP to ID (or whatever), or from ID (or whatever) to QXP, it takes a while to "stop thinking" in the "language" of the former layout application. This, I think, is the most difficult hurdle versus say same/different capabilities.

And all applications in a particular category (e.g., layout, image editing, vector drawing applications) all have different capabilities and/or work-flow methods to "translate" into the new application. But to me, this challenge is no different than having a corrupt file one has been repurposing in application X and having the need to redo it. Most often, for me, the new version is built better, new techniques can be discovered, etc.

Well, I see what you mean. It's just that I do not have time to adapt. I can not suddenly need double and more time to solve tasks. All I do for customers is always tight schedule.

But of course it was all too much for me. New computer, switch from 10.6.8 to 10.14, fight with OSX shortcomings since then, try to adapt Affinity Photo/Photoshop, AffinityDesigner/FreeHand. Here too, I went back using FreeHand in Parallels, because of Affinitys shortcomings in logical usability.

I am very used to changes, for decades testing apps for magazines. But if a GUI is that bad you can not figure things out without consulting handbooks and forums, it is just bad software design.

...But if a GUI is that bad you can not figure things out without consulting handbooks and forums, it is just bad software design.

You describe a lot of changes seemingly all at once and all the newer software was basically canned for similar reasons.

I use QXP & ID just about each day depending on how jobs overlap and the rate of revisions to make to on-going jobs. And a few vector drawing applications and at least 2 images editors. But any "new" applications have to be played with for some time (likely nights/weekends) before I will put them into service. Why? because my work hours are also precious. My brain just cannot absorb such things during real work hours.

QXP's interface is different than ID's. Its menus are different. It's terminology is different in X amount of areas. Capabilities both overlap and/or belong to one or the other. That's no different than any software in any category.